EPF covers 25 more critical illnesses

Employees Provident Fund members suffering from critical illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease can now make withdrawals from Account 2.

In a statement, the EPF said it had expanded its list of critical illnesses eligible under its health withdrawal scheme from 11 to 36 effective yesterday.

EPF chief executive officer Tan Sri Azlan Zainol said the expanded list took into consideration the significant costs required to treat these critical illnesses.

It was aimed at helping members settle fully the costs of treatment and ease their financial burden.

In addition to the 36 critical illnesses, members may now make withdrawals to treat family members under the age of 16 for another three critical illnesses, namely severe asthma, leukaemia and intellectual impairment because of accident or sickness.

Under the scheme, members are allowed to withdraw from Account 2 to pay for their own and family members' medical treatment.

Family members include spouse, children, stepchildren or legally adopted children, parents, parents-in-law, step-parents or legal foster parents and siblings.

Members can also make a joint withdrawal with other family members to cover the required medical expenses, subject to available balance in Account 2 and the total cost of the treatment.

All withdrawals are subject to the validity of medical report, bills and receipts, which must not exceed one year from the date the withdrawal application is submitted.

Bills and receipts must also be in the name of the patient or applicant.

A member is not eligible to apply for the withdrawal if the illness is other than those in the EPF's approved list of critical illnesses, or the cost of medical treatment is fully covered by the respective member's employer or the employer of his or her family members.

Additionally, the scheme does not cover members receiving fertility treatments or alternative treatments such as acupuncture or traditional medication.

Hamilton wins Canadian Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton and his McLaren team made all the right moves in the Canadian Grand Prix, leaving Red Bull behind at sunny Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

Hamilton raced to his second straight Formula 1 victory and second Canadian victory in four years Sunday, holding off teammate Jenson Button to take the season points lead from Red Bull's Mark Webber.

"I don't know why I do well here," Hamilton said. "I love it here. It's a great track, great city, great food and great weather today. ... I'm just able to dial in my car here and have a better feel here than some other places."

Hamilton, the 25-year-old British star who raced to his first F1 victory in 2007 in Montreal, started from the pole en route to his 13th career victory after gambling on Bridgestone's super-soft compound tires in the qualifying finale. The top 10 starters are required to start the race on the tires they used in the final qualifying segment.

Webber qualified second on the more durable medium-compound tires, but was dropped from second to seventh on the starting grid because of a gearbox change.

The Australian took the lead after the other front-runners made their second and last stops, but gave up considerable time on his badly worn tires. He didn't pit until just after Hamilton took the lead on the 50th of 70 laps.

"Tires played a huge role in the race today and, in the end, we did the best we could," Webber said. "I was trying to keep my pace constant, but in the end the tires didn't want that pace and they go away from you. It's virtually impossible to keep the tires from degrading here, no matter how slow you drive."

Hamilton and McLaren managed their tires and pit stops perfectly.

"It was difficult to know how much to save your tires and how much to push," Hamilton said. "It was very, very challenging. It was the ultimate challenge."

Button, also second behind Hamilton two weeks ago in Turkey, finished 2.2 seconds back in the race run without a full-course caution on the demanding 2.71-mile track.

"It was a really fun race," said Button, a two-time winner for McLaren this season after winning the world title last year for Brawn GP. "It was very difficult to judge when to push with the tires. I think I kicked it in a bit early on the last stint, but it got me P2, so I'm very happy with that."

Ferrari's Fernando Alonso was third, followed by Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel and Webber, Mercedes' Nico Rosberg, Renault's Robert Kubica — the 2008 winner in the last race in Montreal — and Toro Rosso's Sebastien Buemi.

Mercedes' Michael Schumacher, the seven-time F1 champion and also a seven-time Montreal winner, finished 11th after starting 13th.

"The first stop was perfectly timed, so it was looking quite promising," Schumacher said. "Then I had a puncture on the front right tire ... after I got together with Kubica, and that obviously decided my race. From there, I was stuck in traffic and there was nothing more to do because today our weapons were not very sharp."

After starting the race on the super-soft tires, Hamilton gave up the lead on the seventh lap to switch to the medium compound. "We felt comfortable with the fact we'd have to stop in the first 10 laps," Hamilton said.

Webber pitted for the first time on the 14th lap, electing to stay with the medium compound, and had little tread left when he hit the pits again on the 50th circuit — just after Hamilton zoomed past.

Hamilton made his final stop on the 26th lap, putting on another set of medium-compound tires. He rejoined the race in fifth place, quickly worked his way to second, and patiently reeled in Webber — more than 11 seconds ahead at one point.

"I really just tried to maintain the correct balance ... and get through traffic without losing too much time," Hamilton said. "It was very tricky, but we managed to deal with it."

Hamilton has 109 championship points through eight of 19 races, giving him a three-point lead over Button and six-point advantage over Webber. In the constructors' standings, McLaren has a 215-193 advantage over Red Bull.

Hakka Museum in Penang???

THE Penang Khek Association will identify a suitable land in Balik Pulau to build a Hakka Heritage Museum.

Association president Datuk Dr Cheah See Kian said the association was looking for a piece of land measuring 1,858.06 sq m (20,000 sq ft) to build the museum.

Dr Cheah, who is also the Malaysian Federation of Hakka Associations’ deputy president, said the museum would be modelled after a traditional Hakka round house.

“We have submitted a memorandum to Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng and I will be following up with him to see if it is possible for the state to grant us a piece of land in Balik Pulau for the purpose.

“The museum will feature different kinds of historical Hakka cultural treasures and the unique living style of the Hakka people,” he said in an interview.

He said the round house would have an eatery, a souvenir shop and an audio visual room for children.

Dr Cheah said Penangites could boast of a new tourist attraction in Balik Pulau if the state approved the project.

On the type of structure chosen for the museum, Dr Cheah said the round house was more commonly known by the people compared to the phoenix house and flat house ping fang.

He said there was historical evidence to prove the existence of Hakka settlement in Balik Pulau about 200 years ago.

“Although the Hakka community is not the largest native dialect group in Penang, it was the pioneer group to open up Penang island, with other dialect groups successfully migrating to Malaysia from south China,” he said.

Dr Cheah said the project, once completed, would be a tribute to the Hakka ancestors and their great achievements.

TheStar

If really follows the designs and architectures as in Fujian, China, I bet this project and museum will be a real big hit to the tourism in Penang :)

D'Piazza Condo for Rent

Hello people,

I have a block D unit of D'Piazza condo for rent. It's a 1100 sq ft unit facing pool. You will get more privacy as it's a corner unit. Here are the details for the unit:

Location: D'Piazza Condo, Bayan Lepas

Unit Size: Block D, 1100 sq ft

Unit Front: Corner Unit, facing pool

Car Park: 2 carparks (back to back)

Condition: Brand New (Furnished/Unfurnished)

Interested party please drop an email to ben8198@hotmail.com or call Mr.Chow at 0124479357.

Thank you folks !!!

Penang Government Gather Community Feedback On Greening Project

The Penang government will be carrying out a short survey from June 10 to 12 along Carnavon street here for its Greening project involving the street, said Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng.

He said the survey would be carried out by Think City Sdn Bhd and the Socio-Economic and Environmental Research Institute (SERI), a non-profit Penang-based think tank and research institute set up in 1997.

"The purpose of the survey is to garner community feedback on a proposed pilot project to green the road divider, traffic island and some portions of pavements along Carnavon street," he told reporters here today.

He explained that Carnavon street was chosen as it was a main arterial road linking the historic city to the Jelutong Expressway and was a busy thoroughfare.

Bernama

If you ask me, I will definitely support this project all the way...I just want a green, environment friendly and scenic Penang to live in :)

Seagate unveals world's fastest hard drive for laptops

Is this Seagate's secret weapon to counter Western Digital? The market analysis shall tell on how this product and the company performs in the coming few months...

Seagate has unveiled Momentus XT, which it claims is the world's fastest 2.5in laptop PC hard drive.

The drive, it said, combines Solid State Drive-like performance with the massive capacity and much lower cost of standard hard disk drives. It has a 7,200rpm spin speed and 4GB of cache memory.

It also features Adaptive Memory - a groundbreaking new technology from Seagate that learns and optimises the drive's performance to each user by moving frequently-used information into the cache memory for faster access.

The Momentus XT solid-state hybrid drive boots up to 100% faster than traditional 5,400rpm (revolutions per minute) drives, the mainstream spin-speed for laptop PCs, said Seagate.

Therefore, it said, the new drive sets higher benchmarks for real-world system performance for laptops and gaming systems.

"For notebook PC users looking forward to faster computer performance without sacrificing storage capacity or affordability, there's now an option," said John Rydning, IDC research director for hard disk drives.

For more information about this latest offering from Seagate, do visit the link below :

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/laptop-hdd

Good job to Seagate and great efforts to my friends and colleagues there :)

Ipoh Starwalk 2010 Results

Hello people out there!


Just like many curious folks out there, I was browsing and searching for the Ipoh Starwalk 2010 results which happened last week and came across this multiply page with the photos of the event. All the results are captured in the photos, albeit with rather low quality ones. But nevertheless, thank you to Yu for sharing out and I'm sure you did your best and make many people happy to get what they want.


Here's the link to Yu's multiply Ipoh Starwalk 2010 photo album :

http://runnwalk.multiply.com/photos/album/20/Ipoh_Starwalk_2010


Enjoy and have a nice day!